Thursday, May 17, 2007

I bet you thought I was never coming back.

Yes, it's been more than a week since my last post, and all I've managed to do lately is post pictures of my flower garden. Sorry about that. I just don't have the gusto I once had for reading and commenting on internet news articles. I'm hoping that it will come back once classes end. Meanwhile, this is the last day of classes at CUNY, and I am sitting in my house averaging my students' quiz grades, listening to Tony Joe White, and generally "taking care of business." It's that time of year when this blog is a welcome respite from the chorus of excuses and cries of unfairness that come from students who have, in the last week of the course, just figured out that they really should have read the syllabus I handed out on the first day.

Since I last wrote, my union's progressive slate has won an election on my campus, and I've been nominated as my campus's representative on the CUNY-wide contract organizing committee. Perhaps that means I'll try to renew my energy for this blog with academic "labor" news a bit this summer. The latest outrage from CUNY management is that they have decided not to pay adjunct professors for their work during the fifteenth week of classes because they're only "proctoring exams" and not really teaching. The cheapness!
CUNY faculty will be protesting next week at lunch time at all the campuses where this is the case, in what's called the Campaign of Outrage

Here are the picket dates:

Monday, May 21 – Baruch, Vertical Campus, 12 - 1:30 pm.

Tuesday, May 22 – Bronx CC, Language Hall, 12 - 1:30 pm.

Wednesday, May 23 – College of Staten Island, Administration Building 1A, 12 -
1:30 pm.

Thursday, May 24 – Queensborough CC, Administration Building, 12:00 - 1:30 pm.

Thursday, May 31 – Kingsborough CC, Administration Building A, 2:00 - 3:30 pm.

For more information, call PSC Organizer Sue Li at (212) 354-1252

and that's all for now.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://protectingbadteachers.com/

reb said...

man,
that's a load of anti-union bullcrap. How and where did you find it?

Anonymous said...

Now that you've turned on the comment moderation, are you going to review comments on a more regular basis than you update your blogposts?

Otherwise you might as well just turn off the comments altogether because I doubt anyone is going to comment more than once if they have to wait days and days to see if their comment gets posted.

Maybe there's someone out there patient enough to wait, but I'm not! So I guess this will be my last comment - I wonder if it will ever get posted?

I prefer to read blogs where there is some level of interaction between the blogger and the commentors - otherwise, what's the point of a blog at all?

PS - if you turned on the moderation because of a few spam posts recently, why is one of the spam posts still there? (The third comment under the yellow tulips picture)

reb said...

Here is your interaction, anonymous. I turned on moderation because I was trying to figure out a way to make commenters not anonymous. At the moment, I have three days to finish grading about 80 ten-page final exams. My students, before those 48 hours are up, are demanding grades from me in nearly constant emails, so pardon me if I don't have time to interact with anonymous people who comment on my blog. argh!

Anonymous said...

Dear Reb,

I am also active in the PSC & would like to contact you about a) the Free Mumia resolution passed at a recent Delegate Assembly, b) a forum this Wednesday at Hunter on the 80th anniversary of Sacco & Vanzetti's execution and its relevance to the fight to free Mumia Abu-Jamal. (It will be at 6:30 pm on Wed. 7/18, Faculty Lounge on the 8th Floor of Hunter West).

What is the best way to contact you?

s_an@msn.com